Professional News: December 7, 2011

Awards and Honors

The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will present a 2011 Trainee Research Award to fourth-year medical student Khine Win at the organization’s 53rd Annual Meeting, which takes place December 10 to 13, 2011, in San Diego, Calif. Win was one of 19 medical students from across the U.S., Mexico and Canada to receive the award. Award recipients, which also include undergraduates and medical residents, each receive $4,000 to conduct research on blood diseases, as well as a $1000 travel stipend to attend the ASH Annual Meeting.

Publications and Presentations

Barbara Arel and Cathy Beaudoin, assistant professors in the School of Business Administration, co-authored an article titled "The impact of ethical leadership, the internal audit function, and moral intensity on a financial reporting decision," that has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Business Ethics. The article examines how the strength of executive ethical leadership and the internal audit function (IAF) jointly influence accounting managers' decisons to book a questionable journal entry. Their results suggest that the influence of ethical leadership is more pronounced when there is a strong IAF compared to a weak one and that a strong IAF may actually decrease the liklihood of booking an undocumented journal entry when combined with a weak ethical leadership. In addition, this research finds that accountants question the appropriateness and ethicalness of the undocumented journal entry more than in the weak ethical leader and strong IAF condition than in the other conditions. Additonally, results show that the joint influence of ethical leadership and the IAF is fully mediated by perceptions of the moral intensity of the issue.

Pramodita Sharma, professor in the School of Business Administration, delivered a keynote address titled "Governing a Family, a Firm, and a Family Enterprise: How a Family Enterprise can Achieve Sustainability” at the 2011 Asia Pacific Successful Transgenerational Entrepreneurship Practices (STEP) Family Summit in November in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Sharma noted that despite participants at the conference being from around the world, there was a unification around issues that concern leaders of family enterprises, particularly succession, trans-generational entrepreneurship, governing a growing firm and family, managing sibling relations, and motivating next generation family and non-family members. Read more.